Angry Robot

The Sankey War Scrapbooks

When World War Two broke out in Europe, my father, Tom Sankey Jr., was a six-year-old living in Racine, Wisconsin. His father (can you guess his name?) worked at the local newspaper, the Racine Journal Times (which still exists).

Despite Tom Jr.’s youth, in 1940, he and his dad began a scrapbook of war-related articles that they continued at least until 1942 – the year after the US entered the war. Here they are, the two I have, which came to light when we were sorting through some of his stuff after his death. I’m not sure if they continued past ’42 and the journals are missing, or if these are the sum total. Regardless, they’re quite something.

Now, I don’t bring these out now because I feel that era matches ours. Perhaps it does, but that’s not the reason. I’ve been meaning to do it for some time. I see in these scrapbooks something of what I do, on this site. Clearly I come from a long line of news hounds.

I’m going to post these page by page, one a day (ish). An archive of them will live here. If you want to follow an RSS feed of the Sankey War Scrapbooks, that’s right here.